Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Another bank holiday - it'll show Britishness alright

The idea of a Britain day seems to have come from a whole host of people - Gordon Brown (some time ago), Ruth Kelly, The Fabian Society....

Yes, an excellent idea. Another Bank Holiday. I am all for that. It'll all be very British:

Loads of beer. The pubs full. Cheap sausages barbecued. Much indigestion. Lots of rain and family arguments. "The 500 best clips of clips of clips" on Channel Four. "How do you solve a coat like Grease" on BBC1 and ITV. Lots of couch potato imitations. Binge drinking and loads of falling about in the street. Brilliant. All very British indeed.

The US example. Oh dear. I need one of my pills. The US example. Crikey. The whole point is that we don't need to wave flags hysterically all the time is that our nation has a history stretching back thousands of years and delineated by our coast.

The reason why the dear, beloved and respected inhabitants of the United States of America have to hyperventilate with flag-waving is that most of them can only trace their ancestry in America back 200 years, if that. They have a point to make. We don't.